78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [JAN. 30 
rounded upper side (in cross section round on one side and 
flat on the other) and always thickest in the middle; a screw 
shape warp or twist, and a wavy or dented upper surface. 
When I refiect that it is only such a statement of fact, well 
substantiated, that merits the interested attention of this society, 
I feel that an apology is due at the outset for the entire absence 
of corroborating formule and equations, from what I have to 
present, especially as the somewhat astonishing literature of 
the boomerang bristles with the pointed persistence of the one 
idea, that this dynamic mystery is a case for mathematical 
formule, if there ever was one. 
In other words, it seems to be the conclusion by general con- 
sent of most writers on the subject, that until the mathematician 
allays the uneasy spirit of this ‘scientific vagabond,’’ by the 
weight of his rigid equations, it will remain to most people the 
fascinating and unsolved riddle that it is. 
Therein I find my excuse for asking your attention to a brief 
review of the literature of the boomerang, before turning my 
slender little brood of naked facts over to cold, scientifie 
criticism. 
The latest publication of any moment that has come to my 
notice is that in Scribner’s Magazine for March, 1890, by Mr. 
Horace Baker, who had made a practical study of the boome- 
rang, and had learned directly from the natives how to make 
and throw it successfully, an accomplishment of which the 
encyclopzedias say, ‘‘ Europeans find it next to impossible to 
acquire.” 
Mr. Baker calls it, ‘‘ that dynamic curiosity which still remains 
a puzzle to the civilized world,’’ but adds, ‘“‘I believe it is 
possible to make a boomerang by exact mathematical calcula- 
tion, but yet I have never seen two exactly alike—of two appar- 
ently alike in every particular, one rose buoyantly, while the 
other fell dead.’’ Thus the majority of writers upon this sub- 
ject, seem to acquiesce ina sort of Pythagorean belief in the 
mystical power of the science of numbers, to explain the puz- 
zling phenomenon of the boomerang’s flight, though there are 
notable exceptions. For instance: In 1837, Prof. McCullagh, 
of Edinburgh, read a paper on the subject before the Royal 
Trish Academy, in which he pointedly said: ‘‘To calculate the 
mutual action of the air and of a body to which is communicated 
at the same time a rotary and a progressive motion is a problem 
which far transcends the present powers of mechanics.’”’ In the 
face of this early warning, the literature of the boomerang is a 
long record of attempts to solve it by calculation. It seems to 
warrant the expectation that of all valiant heroes, the mathe- 
